Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 6 May 2012. No comments.
The great thing is to go forth and get hold of the books of this very great middle to low brow writer of adventure romances, and read them. If this piece delays you in doing so, then ignore it. If it is what may push you into the Shute fan club, then please read on… More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 6 May 2012. No comments.
I would love to pose the question: Is Rosamond Lehmann the best of the mid-20th Century female novelists? I am nowhere near well-enough-read to opine very certainly.
I am thinking of the world before Iris Murdoch (my mother’s favourite during the 1950s and 1960s) and Muriel Spark (whose books I loved in the 1970s). Lehmann’s core competition comes from Stella Gibbons, Betty Miller, Jean Rhys, Rose Macaulay, Elizabeth Bowen. Viriginia Wolf ought to be in there, but perhaps the point is that Lehmann and the others are middlebrow and Woolf’s highbrow competition doesn’t count. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 1 May 2012. No comments.
In 1977, Anne Brunskill of the World’s End Press kindly held my hand in producing a poster for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. It was made with wooden and metal letters and the zillions of ornaments she had to hand in a Thameside studio, and printed on hairy paper (now a bit damaged). Here are three details from the work. More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mind and body / TV and Radio on 7 December 2011. No comments.
Ian Hislop very nearly told us (When Bankers Were Good, BBC2) that Dickensian bankers were more moral than our own. A couple of literati on the Today show (BBC Radio 4, 7 December 2011) did actually say how awful and Dickensian our times are. (The inequality! The homeless!) So which is it? More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mind and body on 1 December 2011. No comments.
We are routinely said to have “lost a decade” and that the loss is unrecoverable. I have no idea what this means. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / Politics and campaigns on 25 November 2011. No comments.
Max Mosley seems to have swept all before him and does so because his case pushes into so many corners of the matters Leveson is considering. Pace the rather silly remarks by Hugo Rifkind in The Times (25 November 2011) it is important that we don’t wrongly calibrate the media’s offences. More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / Politics and campaigns / TV and Radio on 24 November 2011. No comments.
In recent episodes of BBC Radio 4′s The Food Programme there have been interesting examples of – and some challenges to – the show’s dogma. I think it is fair to say the show is crusading for something it calls “real food”. But what is that? More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body / TV and Radio on 11 November 2011. No comments.
Mr Gervais’s new comedy is not very funny.
But it made me uncomfortable only because I am not sure it is proper to let Ricky Gervais pull my chain. More »
Posted by RDN under Military Covenant / Mind and body / Politics and campaigns on 8 November 2011. No comments.
The British Computer Society asked me to be one of two responders at a debate dinner featuring Trevor Phillips of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (7 November 2011).
The question was: will it be possible for someone to be a full citizen without digital access? More »
Posted by RDN under Mind and body on 6 November 2011. No comments.
Edward Burra is far more impressive in the flesh than in reproduction. Waldemar Januszczak got almost everything about him right, I think, in the Sunday Times, and I add only this … More »
